Why Corn Ethanol is Bad
President Bush has been touting ethanol as one of the best, if not the best alternative to gasoline. It doesn’t produce as much carbon dioxide. It can be made in America, using American made\grown resources like corn. That quality is not a bonus, it’s a weakness.
For ethanol to be productive as a fuel, it MUST be made with agricultural waste. By using good corn, you’re being counterproductive. Using corn for ethanol misuses perfectly good food that could be used to feed people. Second, it increases the price of corn. Third, it ravages the soil where it is grown. Fourth, last but definitely not least, it’s not nearly as efficient as politicians would have you think. Corn is grown on farms. Farms don’t pick themselves. Gasoline powered machines fertilize, water and pick the corn plants. The gasoline used drastically lessens the effectiveness of corn ethanol. David Pimentel of Cornell and Tad Patzek of UC, Berkeley, calculate that producing a gallon of corn ethanol consumes 29% more fossil fuel energy than the ethanol saves. Adding to this waste, one has to burn 1.5 gallons of ethanol to go as far as a gallon of gasoline would go.
More Alternative Energy Series:
Why Corn Ethanol is Bad
The Temporary Solution: Coal
Nuclear Power: Energy of the Future or As Bad As Fossil Fuels
5 Reasons Solar Power Works
The Wind Power and Solar Power Combination
Another Look at Nuclear Power - Nuclear Waste
What's So Special About Hydropower and Hydroelectricity?
Top 5 Advantages of Geothermal Power
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25 comments:
I think it is a safe bet that once cellulosic ethanol processes are deployed commercially we will begin to see them being co-installed at new and current corn ethanol facilities all over the Midwest. We are already witnessing the big problem of being too dependent on only one feedstock - its price shoots up faster than its value as food.
Not only will corn stover need to be a major feedstock but other forms of energy crops, forestry feedstock, and biowaste as well. There have been successful pilot tests for bioconverting wood chips, rice straw, tires, municipal solid wastes, autofluff, bagasse, coal, petcoke, etc. There are mountains of some of this stuff all over the country.
The more biomass that is blended into the feedstock, the more decentralized the production of biofuel and the co-generation of green electricity there can be. Production methods, primarily through blending, will become more efficient as well. The product, ethanol, will be the same, but the feedstocks will vary by ecology, location, and stakeholder culture.
Good story and comment. The only problem I see (well, there are lots of problems, but I'm trying to focus) is that the corn subsidies are seriously damaging R&D on cellulosic processes- there is almost no money for reaserch inthis country inless it is for homeland defense, but we keep hearung that energy is a security issue, so the government isn't logical, butit is successful in shovelling money to undeserving corn ethanol businesses. Thanks for your blog. Jim greenchemistry.wordpress.com
Wow, too late for accurate typing. Apologies! Jim
I agree - until subsidies of corn ethanol are lessened, cellulosic ethanol will be unable to really become mainstream.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond! Jim
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It's at least a start for biofuel.
Very informative! How did you come up with this information? Do you work in the field? If so, I have a few questions for you for a research I'm working on.
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